


Slippery

by Krimzie



Category: Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, Psychology, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 09:49:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17526449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krimzie/pseuds/Krimzie
Summary: The question of whether she was acting of her own volition had become a compulsive habit. “What now?” she’d ask herself. “What’s next? What do we want?”





	Slippery

An insidious tug of war sustained only by her undead immunity to physical fatigue rippled through Sylvanas, her slippery soul swaying with it like thin sheets on a clothesline. Ranger-General, banshee, daughter, sister, friend, killer, Forsaken, bitch. Ally, enemy, heartless, empty, cold. Protector. Destroyer. 

Sylvanas. I am Sylvanas Windrunner, Warchief of the Horde.

Since Arthas had ripped out her soul, it had never again settled in the firm and grounded way which a soul inhabits a body in life. Being undead was an indeterminate thing and her ‘self’--insofar as she could objectively observe--never quite stabilized since the day she’d recovered her corpse. She struggled with the persistent undulations in her mind, knowing that getting pulled under any one shift of thought might again leave her thrall to some outside force. The question of whether she was acting of her own volition had become a compulsive habit. “What now?” she’d ask herself. “What’s next? What do we want?”

The pattern of her undead existence, then, became action followed by action. Aggression was active, and aggression was control--and control was exertion of will. Exerting her will meant her mind was her own, undoubtedly. 

She hoped.

She feared she’d never be able to prove what, exactly, drove her to act. Was it her self, her soul? Was it some hand of fate? Was it yet another a malicious tyrant making demands which only felt like her own? She’d once discussed this in a private meeting with a jawless philosopher in Undercity over drinks that, in spite of their lack of inebriating effect, were habitually sipped--or, in his case, poured down a gaping esophagus. He assured her that this was an existential question even the living pondered, and that the only thing she could know for sure is that she’d never know.

Sylvanas had left that conversation abruptly, citing political matters needing her immediate attention, but not before swallowing the dregs of the strong Orcish brew in hopes it’d dull the edges of her relentless distress. It didn’t. It did nothing. She slammed the empty stein on the rotting wooden table.

She’d later had the philosopher imprisoned--in advance--for creating a public disturbance with wild accusations about the Queen’s state of mind. 

When she was alive, she was certain she’d never felt this… disintegrated. Her confidence was unparalleled as Ranger-General of Silvermoon. That much was reflected in her military strategies, the thorough and rigorous training of her rangers, the accuracy of her shot. Who she was and what she did were consistent, predictable, and reliable in every sense. She was the model of a military commander, down to the regulation angles of her pauldron feathers.

But now, Sylvanas couldn’t determine if she was many people or not a person at all. Worse, she still… heard him. Not in the way she might have before she broke free. But he was there, even if just as tortured memories. 

It was not easy to free herself from the Lich King.

Many figured it was her Windrunner stubbornness, her crafty mind, or her unbreakable might that liberated her from the Scourge. And so it was--to an extent. To extricate herself from the weakening tyrant’s grasp was in itself a war. To listen to the right voices--her own voice, barely a whisper under the shouting demands of the Lich King--was a roulette, down to chance alone. Tolerating the inexplicable psychic pain brought on by her resistance was, perhaps, her most impressive feat. It was like trying to swim to air under a frozen lake whilst shackled and bound to the lakebed. 

How often had she lost consciousness while trying to smash through the thick, icy surface of the Scourge’s mind control? She recalled, hazily, how she could watch herself slip behind her enthralled self, both herself and not herself. All at once, she was captive to the banshee’s form, yet powerless to stop her. And so she floated in a liminal space of nonexistence until she could again find the hairline crack in the ice and ram, smash, pound it until it gave. She could only imagine how short those fleeting moments were. Seconds, maybe. Mere seconds of awareness among seasons of imprisonment.

Then, at last, noticing a change--a sort of freedom--but not trusting it. Not fully. 

Am I me? 

Maybe.

Maybe not.

The intensity of her drive to survive those months quickly became permanent, a reality of her undeath. Had she still been alive, her nerves would never be able to tolerate the constant pulse of adrenaline, the persistent scanning of her surroundings, of her thoughts, of her feelings.

To make this so-called “life” easier, feelings were ignored. Thoughts were engaged only when useful. Only the clearest and most concrete mode of existence at her disposal--in this case, the hot hatred of the once-and-still-banshee spirit--was entertained.

And she did what she swore to in life. She protected her own. The quel’dorei and the Alliance cast her out. She would guide and protect her Forsaken and destroy all those who’d threaten that goal, never to fail her people again.

But still her soul undulated. Without cause, she might become intensely aware of her environment as any one of many Sylvanases--her past vibrant life, her banshee torment, the exiled queen, the Warchief--as one does when first waking up in a strange room. Her reflection, on any given day on which she passed it in a well or a lake or a pane of glass, would at random be unfamiliar. Some days she’d tense, forgetting Arthas was destroyed, and cursed whatever amnesia distracted her from her quest for revenge--until she ultimately remembered here, now, she was Warchief of the Horde and Arthas was gone.

It was like slipping from a wet cliff and clutching at vines, only for them to snap; to grab onto the next set, only for them to snap again, all the while free-falling toward, what, death? No.

Toward what?

Toward killing every threat to the Forsaken and conquering all of Azeroth?

It seemed as good a goal as any, sturdy in its expansive scope, active in its enactment, and all-absorbing in its aggressive promise. 

It seemed as good a goal as any.


End file.
